EXCERPT from Wikipedia: Williamina "Minnie" Dean (2 September 1844 – 12 August 1895) was a New Zealander who was found guilty of infanticide and hanged. She was the only woman to receive the death penalty in New Zealand.
In 1895, Dean was
observed boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hatbox, but observed
leaving the same train without the baby and only the hatbox. As railway porters
later testified, the object was suspiciously heavy. A woman, Jane Hornsby, came
forward claiming to have given her granddaughter, Eva, to Dean, and clothes
identified as belonging to this child were found at Dean's residence, but Dean
could not produce the child herself. A search along the railway line found no
sign of the child. Dean was arrested and charged with murder. Her garden was
dug up, and three bodies (two of babies, and one of a boy estimated to be three
years old) were uncovered. An inquest found that one child (Eva) had died of
suffocation and one, later identified as one year-old Dorothy Edith Carter, had
died from an overdose of laudanum (used on children to sedate them). The cause
of death for the third child was not determined. Dean was charged with their
murder.
In her trial,
Dean's lawyer Alfred Hanlon argued that all deaths were accidental, and that
they had been covered up to prevent adverse publicity of the sort that Dean had
previously been subjected to. On 21 June 1895, however, Dean was found guilty
of Dorothy Carter's murder, and sentenced to death. Between June and August
1895, Dean wrote her own account of her life. Altogether, she claimed to have
cared for twenty eight children. Of these, five were in good health when her
establishment was raided, six had died whilst under her care, and one had been
reclaimed by her parents. Apart from her two adopted daughters, that left
fourteen or so children unaccounted for, according to her own record.
On 12 August, she
was hanged by the official executioner Tom Long in Invercargill, at the
intersection of Spey and Leven streets, in what is now the Noel Leeming
carpark. She is the only woman to have been executed in New Zealand, and as
capital punishment in New Zealand has been abolished, it is likely that she will
retain that distinction. She is buried in Winton, alongside her husband, who
died in a house fire in 1908. Her crimes led to the belated passage of child
welfare legislation in New Zealand – the Infant Life Protection Act 1893 and
the Infant Protection Act 1896.
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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
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More cases: Female Serial Killers Executed
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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
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More cases: Female Serial Killers Executed
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